The island nation of Japan has a long and brilliant history -- and a slew of super cute baby names to boot. If you originally hail from Japan, are adopting a Japanese baby or just love names like Haro and Mori, read on!

I thought it was weird that my sister named her car Calliope, but apparently the practice of naming vehicles is not uncommon. The Automobile Association reports that four out of 10
drivers name their cars. More women than men do so (50 percent vs. 33 percent),
and the trend is definitely more popular among the younger set (70 percent of
drivers aged 18-24 vs. 30 percent of drivers over 65). So what, exactly, are
these car names?

Even the most beloved baby names can become tainted by
public scandals. You looked forward to naming your son Bill or William… and then the Bill Cosby rumors surface. Or
you fell in love with the name June but Mama June Shannon decides to
start dating a man who molested her daughter. Were any of your potential baby
names affected by one of 2014's top scandals?

When it comes to baby names, anything goes, right? Not
necessarily. Some countries have actually banned certain words from being used
as names. When you see these names, your question won't be, "Why have
these names been banned?" but rather, "Why would anyone ever want to
give such a name to a child?"

Thanks to the Bible, history and pop culture, there are some baby names that should not make your short list. While you might really like the way a name sounds or just want to protest the forbidden status of a name, it's not fair to your child to saddle him with one of these unwelcome monikers.

Names like Noah and Ezra top the charts for baby boys, but what about four-letter names for baby girls? We checked out the Social Security Administration's top 500 names for baby girls and did the math on just how common they are.

If you want to give your baby a literary name, poking around in the surnames just makes good sense — that's how everyone knows the authors. Literary baby names, like Harper, have flown up the charts in recent years, as have first names based on surnames. Let these fads do double duty as we examine the best names in 20th century literature.